Who knew? Senegalese arrest, prosecution can be swift

Last week, a judge in Senegal convicted a
man of assaulting three journalists outside their newspaper's office in the
capital Dakar last month. The attack was not related to journalism, but the
quick arrest and prosecution of the perpetrator serves as an instructive
contrast between the handling of an ordinary crime and the handling of abuses
against journalists in the line of duty - cases which are usually politicized, stalled,
or both.

Lalla Cissokho, Ndeye Awa Lo, and Oumy
Diakhaté, three female reporters at private daily Walf
Grand'Place, were assaulted by a man wielding a belt on February 17, the
same day several reporters came under attack while covering violent
clashes between security forces and demonstrators protesting President
Abdoulaye Wade's bid for a third
term in office. Having covered the day's events unscathed, the trio left
their newspaper's office around 11 p.m. local time to get something to eat
before heading home. While awaiting their order, Lo made a comment about a
broken-down car that 23-year-old Pape Samba Ndiaye was pushing on the wrong
side of the road with his uncle at the wheel. "I heard one of them insult me
and I went towards them," the Senegalese press agency quoted
Ndiaye as telling the judge during the March 9 hearing. "It was when one of
them had wanted to intervene between me and the other lady I was arguing with
that I removed my belt to beat her."

The judge sentenced Ndiaye to 15 days of
imprisonment for inflicting several injuries on Cissokho and Lo, the media reported.
Cissokho -- who sustained bruises to the lip, left eye, and left shoulder from
multiple hits by the metal buckle of Ndiaye's belt -- told CPJ she was still
recovering from the shock. "Since then I don't go out at night because of the
fear," she said. Lo was also bruised on her back and shoulder. "It happened
Friday night. We first went to the hospital for treatment and immediately
reported the incident to the police on Saturday. But they did not act," she
said. "It was when we got a lawyer that the man was arrested on Tuesday."

Ndiaye was arrested on February 21. Due to
the courts not sitting during the period of the presidential election, he remained
in detention for two weeks until March 5, when his case came up in court. It
was then adjourned until March 9, when the court gave its judgement. "No one
should take the laws into one's hands even if you are insulted," said the
counsel to the journalists, Ndéné Ndiaye, according to Agence de Presse
Senegalaise. The judge, however, released the convicted assailant the same day
on the basis that the two weeks of pretrial detention were tantamount to the
15-day sentence passed on him.

For Aissatou Kane, the president of the
Senegalese association of young journalists, the verdict in the case is
"laughable" in light of the high number of journalists still seeking justice
for abuse at the hands of officials, public figures, and security forces. Judgments
in favor of the press "are very few," Kane told CPJ. "I can count them on the
fingers of one hand." The Senegalese justice system has being "dragging its
feet" in several cases of journalists assaulted, threatened, and intimidated
over the years in retaliation for their work, she said.

CPJ documented
at least a dozen cases of physical or verbal intimidation of journalists
reporting on Senegal's election campaign and February 26 vote, most of them
involving security forces and members of the ruling Democratic Party of Senegal
(PDS), but there have been no arrests since, according to local journalists.
Furthermore, in at least three other high-profile cases going back to 2008, CPJ
found evidence
of executive political interference in the judiciary to shield security forces
and prominent figures of the regime from being held to account.